


The Forest's Call

by aflyingcontradiction



Category: Original Work
Genre: Fantasy, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-12
Updated: 2017-10-12
Packaged: 2019-01-16 10:23:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,967
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12340794
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aflyingcontradiction/pseuds/aflyingcontradiction
Summary: The twin spirits of the forest call to the twin spirits of the village. Will they reach the forest guardians in time, before both pairs of twins and their realms meet their doom?Inspired by the putthepromptsonpaper.tumblr.com image prompt http://putthepromptsonpaper.tumblr.com/post/103909402960/balloon-by-even-liu





	The Forest's Call

**Author's Note:**

> This story was co-written by my husband, who does not have an AO3 account or I would link it.

A slight breeze blew, yet the wind in the trees roared like the ocean. On the mossy ground, an old woman lay on her back watching the hypnotic sway.

“Are they coming?” asked the man nearby, leaning on a tree, tapping his fingers impatiently on the bark.

“I do not know.” 

“They are very late.”

“I know.”

“Maybe they have forgotten us.”

The woman contrived to roll her eyes without taking her eyes from the canopy: “How could they have forgotten their protectors?”

“It has been well over two centuries. Maybe they have different protectors now. Protectors whose veins are filled with blood, not sap, and whose minds are too busy to hear the forest’s call.”

“Nonsense. They will have heard the legend and they will come when called. We came, didn’t we?”

“We never followed the call. We came well before we were called because we had no choice. Have you forgotten?”

The woman no longer seemed to be paying attention, and for a time the trees were again the only sound.

\----------------------------------------------------------

Ysobell fought the fog. She swung and the fog gave, she blew and bellowed and it withdrew at her fury. But it did not surrender what it had taken, her brother Auri called in distress but she could never reach him. It felt like an eternity of struggle, and it must have been most the night, because she awoke aching and exhausted. 

Half still in the dream, Ysobell’s eyes wandered to the empty bed beside her. They had promised they would wake her if his condition changed, but then again they usually hid the serious things from her. 

 

With that thought she jumped from the bed, heart still pounding, to better hear the murmur of conversation from the next room.

“... to a doctor.”

“And how, pray tell, do we do that?”

“I will carry him.”

“On foot? For several weeks through the forest? In his current state?”

“I carried him for nine months inside of me!”

“Oh, don’t be ridiculous. He is not strong enough and you know it. You would not reach the doctor in time. You might die, too, and where would that leave Ysobell? Besides, you know how expensive a good doctor can be! We don’t have the money! There’s only one way to save him now! Auri knows it, too. You’ve heard what he has been saying in his sleep.”

Ysobell had heard it, too, but even if she had slept straight through it, she would know what her brother was dreaming of. She had been having the same dreams.

“Oh, so a doctor is a flight of fantasy but children's tales are just good practical wisdom! If that’s the plan why don’t we just try three wishes from a-”

She could not take it anymore. She opened the door to see her mother in her nightclothes in the candle-lit hallway holding her sleeping brother. His face was pale and his limbs were dangling like a rag-doll’s. He looked so tiny, even though he was twelve years old, just as old as her.

“Ysobell!” her mother said, startled. “You should be in bed.”

“I heard you talking. Is Auri...”

Ysobell’s mother sighed. “You know your brother is very ill.”

Ysobell nodded gravely. Of course she knew. He had fallen ill a week ago. At first, they had thought it was just one of his usual fevers. Auri had always been sickly, after all. But this time none of their grandmother’s remedies had helped. And there was nobody else in the village who knew of any others.

“We need to take him to a doctor.”

“In the city?” asked Ysobell. She might as well have said ‘beyond the edge of the world’, for all the words meant to her.

Nobody ever left the village if they could help it. Ysobell herself had never gone further into the forest than to pick some berries near the edge of the village. The forest was a moat that had protected the village since the Gods themselves had roamed the earth. But like a moat of crocodiles, it could be a danger itself. Getting lost in it meant almost certain death.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” said Ysobell.

“And what do you know?” snapped her mother. “You’re just a silly child.”

“Grandma thinks it’s a bad idea, too.”

“You shouldn’t eavesdrop, child,” said the grandmother. “But you are right.” 

“You are impossible. I can’t believe…”

Auri’s moan cut their mother off mid-scold. He was muttering something. Ysobell leaned closer to him.

“What is it, sweetheart?” asked the mother.

“The tree… like a pillar to the sky …”

“Yes, I saw it, too. Deep in the forest. In my dream,” whispered Ysobell.

“The forest and the village are like a brother and sister, never to be parted lest they both die. What twin spirit would suffer a fellow twin spirit to be torn apart?” Grandmother said.

“Go to bed, Ysobell!” snapped mother with a glare at Grandmother.

\----------------------------------------------------------

“They are so late. They will not come,” moaned the old man. 

“Oh, be quiet, brother. Come,” She patted the patch of leaves next to her, “watch with me!”

“Are they on their way?” the man said, suddenly excited, and lay down in a ginger yet hurried way. He stared into the canopy for a brief moment. His face fell. “Oh no, they are asleep. They haven’t even left yet.”

“You have always worried too much. So they are late. What of it?”

“But I am so old and so tired, sister. You must feel it, too. We cannot hold on forever. What if we fade before they reach us? The forest cannot survive without its guardians. The village cannot survive without the forest.”

The woman’s expression softened as she turned to the man and put a hand on his shoulder: “Do not fret. We will send them a message. They will see it and they will understand.” 

She got swiftly to her feet and walked to the giant tree. She ran her hand along its bark. When she pulled it away, a large drop of sap followed her fingers. In her hands, the sap turned into an ink pen. She stroked the bark gently: “Thank you. I hope your sacrifice will not be in vain.”

Holding the pen up to the canopy, she began to write. The words forming from clouds and leaves would have been invisible to any onlooker but the man, who followed the woman’s pen strokes with disbelief on his face.

“Oh, you cannot be serious.” 

“And why, pray tell, is that?” the woman asked. 

“This is ridiculous! It makes a mockery out of our guardianship! And … and it is hopelessly …” The man waved his arms about in frustration, trying to find the right word and finally settled on “mundane”, though his expression showed it did not express all the disdain he really had for his sister’s idea. 

The woman laughed. “You never will learn the value of pragmatism, brother. ‘Mundane’ it may be, but also, without a doubt, effective.”

The man paced back and forth for a moment, gesticulating silently in search for words, then grabbed the ink pen out of his sister’s hand: “At least let me give the directions! You could not explain your way out of a potato sack!”

\----------------------------------------------------------

“There is a tree, deep in the forest, if you walk north past the wolf’s howl, west along the purple river, then north again through the everlasting fog. It grows in a peaceful clearing and it grows all the way to the heavens above,” Ysobell read aloud from the book of tales and legends that her grandmother had given the twins, even though she had heard it so often, she could have recited it by heart. 

“In the days when the Gods still roamed the earth, spirits climbed down the tree to the ground below,” a soft voice, barely even a whisper, more like a breath of wind, came from the bed.

“Auri!” Ysobell squealed, then clapped her hand to her mouth. Had she woken up her mother? She listened for a moment, but the only noise she could hear was her brother’s ragged breathing. 

“Auri,” she whispered this time. “You’re awake!”

“So … are you,” said her brother. Ysobell had to lie back down beside him so she could hear him, his voice was so quiet. She was not even touching Auri, yet the heat radiating off him was making droplets of sweat appear on her brow.

“Are you feeling better?”

Auri did not answer. But then, even a look at his sallow face was all the answer Ysobell needed. She put a calming hand on her brother’s burning forehead.

“I … want to … see…”

“The tree?” 

“Yes.”

“Nobody has ever made it to the clearing. No human anyway. That’s what the stories say.”

“I … need to see, before … I … die.”

Ysobell gasped. “You won’t die! We’ll find someone to help you. We will!” But it sounded like a lie, even to herself, and when Auri responded, she could hear the disbelief clearly in his near-inaudible voice.

“Where?”

Ysobell got up and looked out of the tiny bedroom window. In the distance, the moon shone softly, bathing the wispy clouds and the forest below in an almost comforting light. Ysobell made a decision. 

“The forest! Grandma says we’ll find help in the forest.” Or if they didn’t - though she did not say this out loud - he might at least see the tree that grew to the heavens before he himself left this earth.

Ysobell slipped into her day clothes and then dressed her brother. It reminded her of when she had been little and dressed her dolly - his arms and legs were just as limp and uncooperative. But at least there had been no danger of hurting her dolly in the process. 

Auri, on the other hand, kept moaning softly in pain every once in a while and she could do nothing but keep muttering “Sorry, I’ll be done soon.”

Finally, when they were both dressed, she tiptoed into the pantry. Slowly, inch by inch, she opened the door, trying to avoid the inevitable creak. She squeezed herself through the tiny gap and, in the darkness, felt for a piece of bread and some cheese. It did not take her long to find the food, but when she turned to leave, the door was open and a figure was standing in the doorway.

Ysobell gave a startled shout and stumbled backward, but the figure grabbed a hold of her and caught her mid-fall.

“Grandma? … I was just … just hungry and …”

The grandmother lifted a finger to her mouth and went “Sh, your mother is sleeping.”

“I know, I’m sorry, but…”

“I know where you’re going,” whispered the grandmother. “Come.”

\----------------------------------------------------------

The old woman smiled up at the canopy: “They’re on their way.”

“On their way?” shouted the man, as he stepped out from the dense woods around the clearing.

“That is what I said.” 

The man downright threw himself to the mossy ground. 

“Have you been pacing this whole time?”

“The elder oak needed my aid.”

“Of course it did,” said the old woman, smiling. “Of course.”

The man lay down next to the woman and stared up at the canopy with a frown: “They are very slow, aren’t they? Are you sure they will make it?”

“We made it, did we not?”

“Yes, but I’m sure we were faster than them. And we didn’t have all the help they are getting. We had to do it all on our own.”

The woman laughed: “You sound just like the humans when they grow old, endlessly complaining about how their children and their children’s children are so much lazier than they were. You have watched the world for long enough, you really should know better. People never change.”

The man got up and walked away from his sister toward the tree line around the clearing. Just before he disappeared between the trees, he turned around and stroppily replied: “I still think we were faster.”

“And how would you know?” the woman shouted after him and went back to watching the canopy.

\----------------------------------------------------------

Ysobell sat down on the wet moss and sighed. She had been walking for hours, pulling Auri, bundled in blankets, in the small cart that their grandmother had given them. She looked over at her brother. His eyes were closed and his chest was barely moving, but every once in a while a moan escaped his mouth, letting Ysobell know that he was still alive.

She had been following the stars to find her way, just like her grandmother had told her, but the forest was getting so dense here. It was becoming next to impossible to pull the cart and the trees were hiding the stars from view. How would she even know where to go from here? But she couldn’t turn back either. At least Auri deserved a chance to see the great tree in person. Besides, Ysobell doubted that she would be able to find her way back. 

With another deep sigh, she crawled over to her brother and stroked his clammy cheek: “Sh, brother, don’t you worry. I’ll find the way. Just let me carry you.”

Ysobell heaved Auri onto her back, very nearly slipping on wet leaves in the process. She was only just able to steady herself against the trunk of a tree. She had given him piggy-back rides before, but right now he couldn’t hold on to her nor wrap his legs around her back. All he could do was groan as he hung off Ysobell’s back like a sack of potatoes.

Ysobell took a few tentative steps in a direction that might, conceivably be north, hoping against hope that it was, when suddenly, a loud noise broke through the rustling of the wind in the trees, through Auri’s moans and Ysobell’s own exhausted sighs. It sounded like the howl of a wolf. 

Every fibre in Ysobell’s body tensed up. She looked around frantically, trying to locate where the howl was coming from. What was she going to do if the wolves found her? She couldn’t run. Not with Auri on her back. They’d tear her and her brother to shreds.

There it was again! The howl! But this time it was longer, unbroken, too long for a creature’s lungs to sustain and there was an odd whistle at the end. Ysobell had never encountered a wolf before, but she knew what the dogs in the village sounded like when they howled and this was not it. Curiosity drove her forward toward the howling noise.

She stumbled slowly through the undergrowth, trying her best to keep stray twigs from whipping Auri in the face. She emerged onto a narrow trail just as the howling picked up again. 

“Auri! Look!” 

An oddly shaped stone with a large hole stood at the far end of the path. It did not look natural, but more like a strange statue, though what it represented was a mystery. Was it a tribute to a spirit made by their ancestors many centuries ago, worn down by age? 

Whatever it was - as another gust of wind passed through the leaves, making them rustle, it passed, also, through the holes in the statue, making the odd sound that Ysobell had taken for a wolf’s howl.

“North past the wolf’s howl,” muttered Ysobell. “So mum was wrong. It’s not just a silly fairy tale! I knew it! Auri! We’ll get there!”

With new-found strength, Ysobell hoisted her brother up on her back and started running along the trail, past the strange weather-worn statue. 

It was not until she was well past the statue and the ache in her shoulders from her brother’s dead weight sprang back to the forefront of her mind that she realised she had no idea whether she was walking north at all.

\----------------------------------------------------------

The old man gave a loud scream. It echoed through the forest, making some birds in the distance take off with startled shrieks. The old woman’s head poked out between two trees. 

“What is it now?” she asked, annoyance thick in her voice.

“They’re going the wrong way. They haven’t even reached the fog yet and they’re already going the wrong way!” 

“Oh, for the love of all that lives and breathes, is that any reason to scream like that?”

The man was pacing back and forth on the clearing now: “They’re lost. They’ll never make their way here! We’ll fade away before they’ve reached us.”

“You’ll wear down the moss if you don’t calm down.”

“Calm down? This is a matter of life and death! How can I calm down? How can YOU BE SO CALM?”

The woman’s hands flew to her ears. “Oh, will you stop it! Your shouting will wake the dead.” 

“Oh, nonsense. I’ve met the dead, their sleep is very deep. Now can we get back to the problem at hand?”

“Look,” sighed the woman.

“If you’re about to tell me some nonsense about how you’re sure they’ll get here in time because you just are, you might as well save your breath and…”

“No! Look!” The woman grabbed the man by the arm and pointed up to the canopy.

“Oh. They’ve turned.”

“Yes. They’ve turned. Now will you stop with the doom and gloom? Your face is making the flowers wither.”

\----------------------------------------------------------

Ysobell had followed the trail for several hours, her brother’s moans and groans in her ear, her eyes straight ahead, every step a test of her perseverance. After hours of dragging herself and Auri along in near silence, she just could not walk anymore. She placed her brother on the ground as gingerly as possible.

“Auri?” She put a hand on his cheek. “Talk to me.”

“Ys … water …”

“Of … of course.”

Ysobell pulled a waterskin out of her bag, held up her brother’s head and poured the water as carefully as she could into Auri’s mouth. He clearly had trouble swallowing - half of the water dribbled out of the side of his mouth onto his clothes and the already moist earth.   
But his throat seemed to be wet enough to speak now, though with some difficulty: “Are … we …”

“We’ll get there. Patience.”

“Lost?”

“No. No, we’re not,” lied Ysobell.

But at just that moment, a loud howl filled the air. Ysobell flinched.

“Wolf?” asked Auri in a low voice.

Ysobell already knew the answer, but she hoped she was wrong. She hoped a wolf would jump out at them from the undergrowth. She could fight it off with a stick, maybe, or just run. 

But there was no wolf. Squinting along the trail she saw the odd statue in the distance. Tears welled up in her eyes. They’d been walking in circles for hours and her brother was dying and she’d wasted so much time being useless, useless, useless!

“You … alright?”

Ysobell wiped her tears from her eyes and blew her nose on her sleeve before she spoke.

“Yes, yes, everything’s fine. I’m just a little tired. Let’s go.” 

She wasn’t quite sure where to go from here, but she couldn’t just sit around and let Auri notice. She looked briefly around for a direction to head in. Clearly the path was just a large circle, but maybe if she broke through the thicket surrounding the statue. But wouldn’t that just lead her back onto the trail? Should she go back the way they had come? If only she could see the sky.

“We’re … lost,” whispered Auri. 

“No, I know where I’m going,” replied Ysobell stubbornly. “Just rest, I’ll get us there.” And she pulled the top of her dress over her face to protect her skin from thorns and sharp branches and began to fight her way through the thicket.

The moment she left the trail, all she could see was green. The leaves were so thick that she might as well have closed her eyes and gone on blindly. The wolf’s howl, so loud on the trail, was muffled by the thicket within seconds and then disappeared altogether, as Ysobell kept walking, feeling her way forward with her increasingly scratched and battered face because she needed both her hands to hold up her brother. 

Auri was awake now. She could hear him talk. His voice was getting softer by the minute and many of his words were drowned out by moans of pain or muffled by the branches whipping around Ysobell’s ears, but every once in a while she could make out a word:  
“Spirits … guide … ever… life” 

It took her a moment to realise what it was he was trying to say, but when she did, a shiver ran down her spine. He was saying the Prayer for Guidance. Asking the spirits to show him the way. Ysobell knew that prayer well. She had heard it before, a few years ago at the deathbed of her father. And a few years before that when her grandfather had died.

“You don’t need that!” Ysobell cried. “You’re not dying! I’ll find you help!”

And she started running, even though branches were cutting her face, even though thorns were scratching her legs. 

She burst out of the undergrowth, bleeding and crying, her clothes torn to shreds. The canopy here was much less thick. 

It was morning now and the sun streaming softly through the leaves was warming Ysobell’s injured skin, but she barely even noticed. Her head was too full of her brother’s hoarse whispers. 

She spotted a path of bright purple flowers, softly nodding their heads in the wind. The motion made it seem like they were a river, flowing slowly through the green depths, alive and mesmerising. But Ysobell barely stopped long enough to look to the sky, figure out which direction was west and keep running. 

\----------------------------------------------------------

“They didn’t even stop to look at the flowers!” whined the old man. “Are you sure that these two are our true successors?”

“Yes, I am. And so are you. Stop being stupid.”

“I’m not…”

“You have been griping for weeks about how slow they are and now they’re suddenly in too much of a hurry? Can you really blame them for not stopping to smell the flowers?”

“I never said to smell them,” grumbled the man.

“They are just about to reach the fog. They will need our help.”

The man sighed. “Of course they will. I shall prepare their guide.” He reached toward the sky where the sun was giving the clouds a beautiful orange glow. A wooly cloud came to rest in his hand. Even between his fingers, removed from the sun’s light, the cloud continued to glow as the man began to knead it like a potter kneads his clay.

\----------------------------------------------------------

Ysobell looked over her shoulder as she ran. In the distance she could still see the river of purple flowers joining the large and equally purple flower pond that might, on any other day, have invited her to fall backwards into it and sleep amid its blooms. 

She was certainly tired enough to do so, but she had no time. No time at all. Her lungs were burning and her bones were aching, but Auri had stopped praying now. He had stopped talking altogether. Even his moans were getting weaker and weaker. She had to hurry.

She had barely walked out of sight of the flower pond when she found herself out of sight of everything else, too. The fog had come out of nowhere, but was already thick enough to turn everything more than an arm’s length from Ysobell’s face into white nothingness.

“Oh no,” cried Ysobell. She looked desperately up at the sky, but the sky may as well never have existed for how much she could see of it. How was she supposed to find her way now?

She took a step forward. Another step. But was she even going the right way now? Her hands felt for anything that could have given her an indication of what was around her, but all she could feel was cold, wet fog. She could be inches from an abyss and she would not know until she fell.

“I’ll find a way, Auri, I promise,” she whispered. Listened for a response. A groan or anything. But everything was silence. Complete silence. “Auri? AURI!”

She ripped her brother off her back and laid him on the wet grass. His chest was not moving at all.

“Auri. Please. Please wake up.” 

She kissed his forehead. It was so cold. An icy shudder ran down her spine.

“No. No, you can’t be dead.”

She pulled Auri’s body into a tight embrace.

“Please, we are almost there. We just have to make it through the fog. We’ll see the tree and we’ll get help for you. Please, Auri. Please. Please don’t be dead.”

Auri did not stir. 

Not knowing why, not knowing whose response she was hoping for in the middle of the thickest fog in the loneliest forest, Ysobell took a deep breath and screamed: “HELP! PLEASE! WE NEED HELP!”

Her lungs were aching and her voice was breaking and wavering. The fog, impenetrable even before, became more and more like a wall. Her cries for help would never make it through. She would be smothered. And Auri - Auri was dead. 

“Please. Help,” she whispered. “Someone. Anyone. Please.”

She turned her eyes away from her brother’s cold, lifeless body and toward the sky - cold, grey and lifeless itself, like a shroud falling over her and Auri … except, there was a strange flickering light somewhere in the distance. Ysobell squinted. Was the sun breaking through the fog? But the light was definitely coming closer, flickering like candlelight all the way. Ysobell watched the light getting bigger and bigger. Then it stopped. It was hovering in some distance now.

Ysobell picked up her brother and started to walk. She could barely feel his weight now nor the deep ache in her lungs and bones. She just kept walking. Walking toward the flicker in the distance that shone so brightly through the fog, telling her that there must be something more in this forest than mist and death. 

And then the fog suddenly lifted and she saw that the light had come from a strange, round balloon. The balloon itself had a soft orange glow about it, like the sun shining through clouds, but the flicker had come from a lantern attached to its bottom. Ysobell tore her eyes away from the odd balloon floating in front of her face and found herself in a peaceful clearing. 

Birdsong and the whisper of leaves were filling the air and everything smelled so sweet that she could not help but take a deep breath to drink in the fragrance. 

Straight in front of her, there was a huge tree trunk. Ysobell’s eyes followed it skyward but no matter how she craned her neck, she could not see the tree’s leaves.

As she lowered her head, she found herself face to face with two figures, standing just an arm’s length away. A startled cry escaped her lips and she stumbled backwards. 

They were a man and a woman, grizzled and ancient looking but they did not look like any old person Ysobell had met before. Not only were they not bent with age, but they were also clad in what looked like clothes made of tree bark and leaves.

“Spirits,” gasped Ysobell.

“You are early, child,” said the woman.

Ysobell did not know what she meant, but she had more urgent worries: “My brother. He is …”

“We know,” said the man and put a hand on her shoulder. “Do not worry. We can help.”

“Now come with us,” said the woman. “We have a lot to talk about.”

And Ysobell followed the spirits as they walked toward the giant tree.

\----------------------------------------------------------

“They are here,” said the old woman, just a moment before two very bewildered and very annoyed-looking figures burst into the clearing. 

They were a young man and a young woman, clearly in their late teens. They looked rather dishevelled and might have had more twigs and leaves in their hair than the old man and woman themselves. 

They stared at the man and the woman in utter confusion. The girl poked the boy in the side and loudly whispered: “Are you sure this is it?”

“Well, this looks like what they described in the ad.”

“That ad was weird and this is weird and they are weird, too. We shouldn’t have come.”

“Sh, they can hear us, we’ll never get the job.”

“Are you nuts? They’re not going to give us a job. They’re going to murder us and nobody will ever find our…”

“This … this is for the … erm … custodial job, right?” asked the boy in a louder voice and looked around with a deep frown.

“You are late,” said the old man without answering the boy’s question.

“Yeah, sorry about that. We got a bit lost.”

“Well, you were pretty hard to find, you know,” said the girl, sounding far less apologetic than her brother. “We haven’t had a signal in hours!” She waved her phone around to demonstrate. “And then there was this weird fog all of the sudden and we basically followed this weird … balloon.” The way she said the word made it sound like the balloon had gravely insulted her family and the old woman could not help but laugh.

“You really could’ve found a more accessible place for a job interview.” 

“Sophie! Shut up!” hissed the boy. “My sister has had a very long day. She doesn’t mean it. This place is very … charming, Mister … erm … Miss ….”

“You can call me Ysobell,” said the old woman. “And this is my brother Auri. Now come, we have a lot to talk about.”


End file.
